Robert M Chapple, Archaeologist

[** If you like this post, please make a donation to the IR&DD project using the secure button at the end. If you think it is interesting or useful, please re-share via Facebook, Google+, Twitter etc. To help keep the site in operation, please use the amazon search portal at the end of the post - each purchase earns a small amount of advertising revenue**] Physics! If you’ve ever met me, or spent any time around this blog, you’ll know that I’m pretty obsessed with radiocarbon dates (and dendrochronological dates, too, but to a lesser extent). It’s only in recent times that I learned that some people think that I’m a proper scientist and work somewhere with a radiocarbon laboratory, actually producing these dates. Would that it were so! Ernest Rutherford is often quoted as saying that ‘All science is either physics or stamp collecting’. Those who work to produce the dates – that’s physics. What I do is definitely the ‘stamp collecting’ end of the market! I’ve told the ...

[** If you like this post, please make a donation to the IR&DD project using the secure button at the end. If you think it is interesting or useful, please re-share via Facebook, Google+, Twitter etc. To help keep the site in operation, please use the amazon search portal at the end of the post - each purchase earns a small amount of advertising revenue**] This article is dedicated to the picnic table in the south west corner of the beer garden of Clarkes Bar in Drogheda. And to all who sail in her. Stuart Rathbone Anatomy and the Archaeologist The human shoulder is a phenomenal mechanism. It is formed of a combination of three bones, two types of cartilage and 10 muscles and it can perform an astonishing range of movements. I'm 35 years old and right handed. Because I'm trying to limit my use of expletives I shall describe myself here as a field archaeologist. My right shoulder, located at the top of my trowelling arm, sounds as if ...

[** If you like this post, please make a donation to the IR&DD project using the secure button at the end. If you think it is interesting or useful, please re-share via Facebook, Google+, Twitter etc. To help keep the site in operation, please use the amazon search portal at the end of the post - each purchase earns a small amount of advertising revenue**] Today (22 nd August 2013) is a very special day for me! It’s my blog’s second birthday! The stats are pretty impressive: 65 published posts 106 blog followers +81,500 page views OK … it’s not the Huffington Post , but it’s not bad! I had intended to write something for the first birthday of the blog, but with all the commotion going on about the Drumclay Crannog , there just didn’t seem to be the time. This year I wanted to reflect on where the blog came from, what it’s managed to achieve, and where it may be going. At Nendrum, Co. Down August 2011 was a pretty dark time for me. In terms of my c...